Every entrepreneur should self-publish a book, because self-publishing is the new business card. If you want to stand out in a world of content, you need to underline your expertise.—James Altucher

A while back I said there are two kinds of publishing: Author Pays and Someone Else pays. Altucher has a different take on it. What he sees is Professional Publishing and Unprofessional Publishing, and he argues that some of the latter is being done by the big houses. I can’t refute that. Continue reading →

Since the earliest days of mechanized publishing, when Herr Gutenberg was putting ink to paper in what for the time was a staggering pace, there have been printers and publishers and, as noted earlier, these were usually two different people. The publisher paid the printer to produce the book, and the publisher made his money on sales of the book. If the author was lucky, he got a cut, too, but for a long time, especially in the states, this was iffy. No one likes to admit it these days, but a big portion of the profits of publishers in the 19th century came from bootleg copies of books by British authors like Charles Dickens. Continue reading →

Time

Royalty publishing takes a looooooong time. It can take up to 18 months to get a book through the production process. At major houses, once you have a contract, you’ll usually get through the process within that time frame, sometimes faster. At small presses, timeframes vary widely. Because they are nimble, small presses can often get a book produced faster than a behemoth publisher where every decision has to go through three committees. But small presses are more subject to sudden workflow interruptions like funding shortfalls or a key player falling ill with no one to pick up their role.

But the biggest obstacle, timewise, is the length of time it takes to get the contract. Continue reading →

Like this:

When you hire a vendor to produce your book, the company usually provides one of its own ISBNs, which makes it your publisher of record. This is also true if you use the free ISBN provided by Create Space or Smashwords.

Bowker is the U.S. registrar for International Standard Book Numbers. Each book receives a unique ISBN, which goes into the Bowker database booksellers and libraries use for ordering. When a bookseller looks up the book in Bowker’s database, the “Publisher” field will say “Create Space” or the name of your vendor.

How can this be if, as I said, you’re the publisher because you’re paying the bill? Continue reading →

In the comments, Jennifer wrote, “What a publisher calls itself does not matter. What matters are the terms of the contract.”

True. A company can call itself whatever it chooses, but whether it’s a true publisher or a vendor providing services depends on what’s in the contract, not its name.

But what the rest of us call these companies does matter. It troubles me to hear authors who’ve hired an author services vendor to produce their book refer to that company as “my publisher.” Continue reading →

Some people think so-called “traditional publishing” is the only true publishing, and that any author who pays to publish their book is getting ripped off. Those folks will tell you that subsidy publishing is just a new name for the ol’ vanity press scam.

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My Debut Novel

Alara’s Call is the first book in my fantasy series The Prophet’s Chronicle, about a clergywoman who is called to prophesy to world leaders—starting with her father. Buy now on Amazon.

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